Squash Galore!

Since my last post, I have introduced two more foods to my diet along with pears. The pears seemed not cause my body any problems; the pear sauce was pretty delicious as well.

Thursday was acorn squash day, and yesterday was butternut squash day.

For the acorn squash, I stuck to the recipe I had used before from the BTVC book. When we experimented with this recipe at the beach, we fell in love with it. The acorn squash comes out something like a sweet potato, which is something I absolutely love but is illegal for this diet plan.

In order to cook the acorn squash, I first had to cut it in half which is a chore in itself. Even with the biggest, sharpest knife we have it takes so much effort to cut this squash in half. But, once you do that its easy as pie from there. You just scoop out all of the seeds, put both halves on a baking sheet cut side down, and then bake them in the oven at 400 degrees until you can poke a dull knife through the squash. This could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on how big your squash is. Once they are nice a tender, take them out and flip them over on the baking sheet so they look like little squash bowls. Spread butter around the squash and in the middle, then add honey. I usually spread the butter around the edge some and then put the majority into the bowl part of the squash. Then I will fill the middle with honey and drizzle some around the edge. Once you do this, put the baking sheet back into the oven for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees. They will be so sweet, delicious, and tender when they are finished. At the beach we added some garlic salt, and that was tasty. But since I cannot have garlic salt I have just been adding regular salt, and once I added some cinnamon.

Acorn Squash and Salmon

This acorn squash is super tasty; everyone should try this recipe out!

As for the butternut squash, I had never had this type of squash before and had no idea how to go about preparing it. So, I looked up a recipe online and came across one for a french fry type butternut squash. I figured it would be a good idea to know a substitute for french fries since I cannot have potatoes. I went by the recipe and peeled then cut up the butternut squash into somewhat of fry shapes. And I thought the acorn squash was hard to cut in half, ha. This squash was so hard to cut into fries. Once I had it cut up though, I salted them and then spread them out on a paper towel to let the excess moisture escape. They sat probably about 20 minutes, the recipe calls for 30 minutes or longer. I then patted them with a paper towel to get all the moisture off of them and added them to a bowl to toss them in a little bit of olive oil. On a baking sheet lined with waxed paper, I spread the "fries" out and then baked them at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Then I flipped them and baked them another 10 or so minutes. Mine never got brown and crisp like the recipe says, so I'm sure something I did caused that, but they were still quite tasty. I salted and peppered them after I took them out of the oven.

Butternut Squash Fries and Deer Burger Pattie

You almost forget its squash and not potato!

I also made some more pear sauce and yogurt this week. They say third times the charm, well this time I think I finally made my yogurt right! I looks better than the last batch at least, have not had a chance to taste it yet.

Next food to introduce is spinach!

SCDiet: Stage One

Now that the introduction phase of the SCDiet is complete, I can start introducing foods one at a time to see how my body responds. I am going by the stages planned out on Pecan Bread, which lists all foods for each stage and how they should be prepared. At first, all foods are going to have to be cooked, peeled, and have any seeds removed for easy digestion. The first stage has the smallest amount of foods to introduce, and the most easy to digest. Remember, my gut is still trying to heal while I'm going through this process so the easier to digest, the better. 

I had actually started stage one somewhat without even realizing it when I had the baked honey apples. I also already had some ripe banana in my homemade jello without any problems. So, that is two foods down and so many to go. There are a total of 5 stages in this diet plan to go through, and I believe it is going to take me over a year to get through all of them. It will be worth it though, hopefully a fully healed gut and an overall healthier me. 

So, yesterday being the first official day of stage one food introduction, I cooked pear-sauce and some more homemade yogurt. Speaking of yogurt, I figured out that I did not let it stay in my yogurt maker long enough the first time. I mean, it was still yogurt, but I did not make it SCDiet style. the SCDiet calls for the yogurt to stay in the yogurt maker for at least 24 hours, while the normal time called for in the manual is only 4 hours. This time it will be the full 24 hours, and I will be able to compare the difference. According to the SCDiet, having the yogurt "cook" for the 24 hours makes the yogurt basically lactose free, which is the goal. So, I'm not sure if eating all this 4 hour yogurt I made really affected my introduction diet or not since it still contained lactose.

Warming my milk for yogurt

 
Yesterday was "Pear Day." I made pear-sauce as my way to introduce the fruit in the most easily digestible way. It ended up tasting very similar to applesauce, but ya know, with pears. I followed the Pecan Bread recipe for the sauce, which was really basic and simple. I had four pears, peeled, cored, and cut into chunks. Then I added them to a pan with a half a cup of water. The recipe calls for it to simmer for 15 minutes, but I ended up at more of a slight boil for 20 minutes to make the pears softer and better cooked. Then, I added two tablespoons of honey and some ground cinnamon. I stirred it all up really well, letting the honey melt and cinnamon spread all over the pear pieces. Once my pears were cool enough to work with, I poured the mixture into my NutriBullet and blasted it into a baby-food type consistency. Love my NutriBullet, everyone should have one. I bought it before I even knew I had Crohn's, and now that I'm on this diet it will become even more useful. Anyways, pear-sauce! Those four pears made me three nice sized servings of sauce, probably a cup or a little more a piece.

Peeling some pears

Pears ready to cook

Once it chilled in the fridge, I had some for dessert after dinner. Yum! It was tasty for sure, and my stomach seemed to like it too.

Final product - Pearsauce!

Each food I will be introducing over a four day period to let my body adjust and make sure I have no bad reactions. So, it will be pear day, rest day, pear day, rest day, then next food. And so on. 


Next food, acorn squash on Thursday!

August Food Schedule

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet: The First Three Days

This week started my journey with the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I had my "last meal" at Red Lobster on Sunday for lunch with my parents... can someone say Crabfest! Snow crab legs and cheesy garlic biscuits! It was so good, a perfect last meal for sure.


Monday morning started my SC Diet. Sunday, in preparation for the diet, I cooked the Chicken Soup recipe from the Breaking the Vicious Cycle book. I also made my first batch of homemade yogurt in my Yogourmet yogurt maker along with some homemade jello. These few foods are a part of the introduction diet phase of the SC Diet. This phase takes from 2 to 5 days to start the "initial die-off of bacterial overgrowth, which is one of the reasons the introductory diet is so important. It will help to clean your system out, so that you can begin to heal" (1). Once the initial 2 to 5 days of the intro diet is complete, I can start to slowly introduce foods one at a time in order of most easily digestible. Luckily, a nice site called Pecan Bread that supports the SC Diet has already put these levels of foods into phases for us. I plan to start the first phase of food introduction on Saturday.


The introduction recipes are pretty simple to make, and they are all in the book as well as online.

Pureed Carrots

The chicken soup recipe was the first one that I made. Daddy had to show me how to cut up a whole chicken, something I'm sure I will have to be shown again. Then, we had to use two pots since when I added the carrots there was no room for anything else. So, two pots; one whole chicken cut into wings, breast, legs, and thighs; one two pound bag of baby carrots (or ten large carrots peeled); two large onions quartered; four stalks of celery roughly chopped (or in my case snapped into fours). I divided the ingredients evenly into the to pots and then filled them with water, brought them to a boil and then lowered to a simmer for about four and half hours. The next morning I took out the cooled chicken to de-bone and removed the skin along with breaking it up into pieces (which was very easy since it was fall-off-the-bone tender). Then, I removed the carrots and strained the broth to remove the onion and celery. In the introduction phase of the diet you should not eat the onion and celery. I added the chicken back to the broth which now fit all into one large pot. The recipe then calls for you to puree the carrots before adding them back to the broth. So, I got to put my lovely Nutribullet to use to "blast" my carrots into a rich baby food like consistency. Once I got all my carrots pureed up, I added them back to the soup and stirred it all up. Chicken Carrot Soup! Add salt to taste.

Yogurt in my glass jar

Next, I decided to try out my new yogurt maker. I was super excited to get my yogurt maker in the mail a couple days before, so I was just dying to put it to use. I followed the instructions in the manual to make the yogurt. It was the same basic recipe that is in the BTVC book and online. First you have to warm a half gallon of whole milk to a certain temperature (use temp in the recipe you are using) which is just about boiling. Then you have to wait for the milk to cool to a certain temperature... I think mine had to get to 42 degrees C. Then, add lukewarm water up to the line in your yogurt maker. I used the Yogourmet yogurt starter, so I had to mix this with about five teaspoons of the warm milk to dissolve before adding it to the rest of the milk. When adding the starter to the rest of the milk, it is VERY important that you mix it well and it is evenly distributed throughout the milk to make an evenly consistency in the finished product. Now you should have all of your milk and starter mixed in the plastic container that goes into your yogurt maker. Place the container in the yogurt maker and let it do its thing for four to four and a half hours! Make sure to refrigerate for at least eight hours before eating.

White grape jello with scrambled eggs

The last thing I made was by far the easiest. You make homemade jello with plain gelatin mix, Welch's 100% no sugar added grape juice, and honey. First, add one cup of the grape juice to a mixing bowl and then sprinkle one packet of plain gelatin mix over the juice. Let this sit for about a minute or two. While you are waiting, warm up a cup of water in the microwave for about a minute and a half. Add the hot water to the juice mixture and stir until completely dissolved (the recipe says five minutes). Then you can add honey to taste or saccharine sugar substitute. I added honey in mine of course. Love some honey! This made about three, on the larger size, cups of jello.

Tilapia with cheddar

So, these are the things I have been eating the past three days. I've also had scrambled eggs for breakfast, broiled beef patties made with organic beef, and broiled tilapia fillets.

Chicken soup with broiled beef patties

It has not been too bad, just a lot of the same. At least it does not taste bad. Tonight I even baked some apples filled with butter, honey, and cinnamon! Yum!

Honey and peppermint tea!

Baked honey, butter, cinnamon apples

(1). "The Intro Diet - Breaking the Vicious Cycle." Breaking the Vicious Cycle. Breaking the Vicious Cycle™, n.d. Web. 13 Aug. 2014.

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet: Introduction

I recently read the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall. This book is all about digestive health through eating the correct things for your body. Gottschall covers all of the scientific evidence and reasoning behind the diet she introduces in the book, The Specific Carbohydrate Diet.

Source: Amazon.com

"The Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ has helped many thousands of people with various forms of bowel disease and other ailments vastly improve their quality of life. In many cases people consider themselves cured. It is a diet intended mainly for Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, celiac disease, diverticulitis, cystic fibrosis and chronic diarrhea. However it is a very healthy, balanced and safe diet that has health benefits for everyone. The foods that are allowed on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ are based on the chemical structure of these foods. Carbohydrates are classified by their molecular structure. 

The allowed carbohydrates are monosaccharides and have a single molecule structure that allow them to be easily absorbed by the intestine wall. Complex carbohydrates which are disaccharides (double molecules) and polysaccharides (chain molecules) are not allowed. Complex carbohydrates that are not easily digested feed harmful bacteria in our intestines causing them to overgrow producing by products and inflaming the intestine wall. The diet works by starving out these bacteria and restoring the balance of bacteria in our gut. 

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ is biologically correct because it is species appropriate. The allowed foods are mainly those that early man ate before agriculture began. The diet we evolved to eat over millions of years was predominantly one of meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, nuts, low-sugar fruits. Our modern diet including starches, grains, pasta, legumes, and breads has only been consumed for a mere 10,000 years. In the last hundred years the increase in complex sugars and chemical additives in the diet has led to a huge increase in health problems ranging from severe bowel disorders to obesity and brain function disorders. We have not adapted to eat this modern diet as there has not been enough time for natural selection to operate. It therefore makes sense to eat the diet we evolved with. 

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ was clinically tested for over 50 years by Dr Haas and biochemist Elaine Gottschall with convincing results. From feedback from the various lists and other information at least 75% of those who adhere rigidly to the diet gain significant improvement." (1)

This diet is meant to help put Irritable Bowel Diseases into remission and heal the damage that has been done. For Crohn's disease sufferers, the author recommends a minimum of two years on the diet due to the severity of the disease and damage that is done to the digestive tract. 

It will be a difficult change to make, lots of planning and cooking at home all the time, but I'm going to push myself to follow this life-changing diet to the best of my ability. 

1. "About the Diet." Breaking the Vicious Cycle. Kirkton Press Limited, n.d. Web. 12 Aug. 2014.